Canada sends team of 50 to 2023 World Athletics Championships

Last week Canada named their 50 athletes for the flight to Budapest later this month to take part in the World Athletics Championships. The games begin on August 19 and run until August 27 in the Hungarian capital.

Hopes will be high for the squad after an excellent games last year in Eugene, Oregon. Medals were won then and the team will be expected to return from Budapest with at least a similar haul from the 2023 World Athletics Championships.

Getting a bet on athletics action is not always the easiest but we have a wide range of the best betting sites in Canada to choose from. Whether having a bet or not, the action is going to come up thick and fast on the track so let’s get stuck into the main medal hopes that Team Canada has in Budapest.

Just a year removed from the 2022 games, so it is worth looking back first before we look forward. The haul in Eugene, Oregon was good enough to see Canada finish in a tie for 9th place in the medal table. That included a single gold medal but was bolstered by two silvers and a bronze. It was a step up from no golds, one silver and four bronzes in the 2019 games in Doha.

All of the athletes who took home medals in 2023 will be on the plane to Budapest and there is some real quality coming through behind them in terms of younger members of the team who will be making their first appearance at a games. This will be a learning curve for them in 2023 but they are without a doubt medal hopes for the future.

There are at least three genuine gold medal chances in Budapest for Team Canada. One on the track, one in the field and one with a mix of the pair! It takes serious dedication to get good enough to even make a World Athletics Championships team, let alone contend for a medal so these are the cream of the Canadian crop heading into Hungary this summer. 

Men’s 4 X 100m Relay

The sole gold medal in 2022 came courtesy of Aaron Brown, Andre de Grasse, Jerome Blake and Brendon Rodney in the Men’s 4 X 100m relay. Their 37.48 in the final was a new national record, the perfect time to produce the run of their lives.

What makes it more remarkable is that as individuals, none of the four athletes are in with any sort of a chance at an individual gold but put the four of them together and it is electric. Brown is the best of the team, ranked 15th in the world at the 100m, Blake is 71st, Rodney is 89th while de Grasse fails to break the top 100 in the world at present.

A fifth name to throw into the mix is Duan Asemota. He ran a personal best of 10.13 in June to leap up to 81st in the rankings. It is worth noting that he ran new figures for 60m indoors in February as well so the 26yo is clearly in great shape heading to Budapest and looks set to feature at some point. 

Men’s Decathlon

A personal best of 8701 points was enough for Pierce LePage to take silver in the Decathlon last year. He scored a single point less in May when competing in Austria but that saw him lay down a strong marker for these World Athletics Championships. 

His performance in 2023 in the 100m, the Shot Put and Javelin have produced new career-best marks for him which would suggest that he is peaking at the right time again to put on a show in Budapest. LePage is officially ranked the number 1 decathlete in the world at present ahead of his old rival Kevin Mayer of France who won the gold in 2022. This is going to be one of the best events of the entire week.

Women’s Hammer 

The Women’s hammer will see more free spins than anyone would know what to do with. Camryn Rogers is the Canadian hope here, like LaPage, she was the silver medalist in her discipline in 2022 and will be hoping to go one spot better this time around.

Brooke Anderson of the USA was the Eugene winner and is World number 1 at present with Rogers chasing her closely in second. In Los Angeles in May, Rogers set a new National record when she threw 78.62m. 

Anderson has cleared 80m in the past but Rogers is in the form of her life and as she is three years younger than the American, she might yet have a little more distance in her. We hope that we see that in Budapest.

The three events mentioned above are far from the only ones that Canada has hopes of standing on the podium for in Budapest. There are another four athletes who will be looking to have a World Athletics Championships medal hung around their necks by the end of August. It might not be gold but who’s to say that it won’t be when all is said and done?

Women’s Pole Vault

The 2018 Commonwealth Games Champion, Alysha Newman has already made it into the top eight twice at a World Athletics Championship. Currently ranked number six in the world, she will be very disappointed if she is not in with a shout of a medal in Budapest later in the month.

A 4.78 indoors in Birmingham, England back in February is the second highest of her life indoors, clearing 4.73 outdoors at the end of July in Langley. Those vaults would suggest that Newman is coming back to something like her Commonwealth-winning form. A repeat of that level would see her in the shake-up for a bronze medal.

Men’s 800m

Marco Arop landed the bronze medal in the Men’s 800m in 2022 and will be looking to consolidate his position at the top of the middle-distance tree in Budapest. Born in Sudan, it was quite a journey for Arop to get to where he is so it is no surprise that he is a bulldog in a fight, quite literally, with Mississippi State, his Alma Mater.  

It is a journey that has taken Arop to the top of the world rankings that cover 600-1000m in athletics. A run in Paris in June was 0.04 of a second away from his personal best which he set in Monaco in 2021. 

As the World number 1, you might be surprised that he is not in the gold medal hopefuls but his last two runs have been quite some way below his very best so perhaps he is not hitting Budapest in quite the form he would like to be. That said, given his ranking, he is very much a medal hope for Team Canada.

Men’s High Jump

Django Lovett has slipped down to number 11 in the rankings this year but that has simply been down to him not making it to events. Langley saw him in action for the first time in a major competition for three months and only his second outdoors in 2023. He was a long way below his best but it will have blown away the cobwebs if nothing else.

It is worth noting that two of the top four jumps of his life have come in an Olympic Final and in a Commonwealth Final so he is very much a man for the big occasion. He will be a big price to win a World Athletics Championship gold medal in Budapest but don’t put it past him finding a way to put it all together when it really matters in the final.  

Shot Put 

When it comes to Sarah Mitton, it could easily be argued that she is another who deserves to be in the gold medal group. Ranked second to only Chase Ealey of the USA, but she is yet to really do it on the big stage. She won Commonwealth gold last year but only had to go to 19.03 to do so.

Mitton was fourth in Eugene but she was just seventh going into the final round after a succession of throws well below what she is capable of. A 19.77 saw her tie the bronze medallist on distance but her rival threw that far twice so won the medal on countback. That will have hurt but hopefully, Mitton will learn from the experience.

Her best in 2022 was 20.33 leading up to those games, throwing 19.83 so far this year so she is more than capable. Both of those came in Langley, however, so the question mark is whether she can do the same in Budapest rather than on home soil. The class is undoubtedly there to return with a medal if she puts it all together.

The good news is that Canada has some excellent prospects for the future, including a Women’s 400m hurdler who could be a genuine star in athletics. 

Men’s 1500m

25yo Kieran Lumb has taken a huge step forward this year, clocking 3:35:43 in June, a personal best by quite some distance. He now flirts with being in the top 50 in the world over 1500m, with that time being in the mix to at the very least qualify for the semi-final stage in Budapest. 

It will be a stretch for him to make the final 12 but that time would have had him in the mix for a quickest loser spot for the final at the Eugene games. He is going to have to run his heart out this month but it would not be the biggest surprise if Lumb is able to provide a bit of a scare to the more established athletes out there. 

Women’s 400m Hurdles

At just 20yo, Savannah Sutherland has already made it to 27th in the world rankings in her event. She took bronze in the World U20 Championships in 2021 and has continued to rise from there to her current position. 

A 54.45 in Austin in June was the best run of her life, a quicker time than two of the 2022 finalists did in Eugene. Now, it’s not possible to just pluck a time out of nowhere and add it into a race with zero context but it does show that she is capable of running times that could see her make a Final at the World Athletics Championships.

Whatever Sutherland does this year will just be a precursor to her first Olympic Games in Paris next year. If she can keep improving at the rate she has been, France could be her coming out party on the biggest stage of them all.

We think that Canada will come back with two golds, two silvers and three bronze medals from the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest. Yes, that might read as a touch on the optimistic side but we are very hopeful that this team will deliver.

The most exciting thing is going to be to watch the emergence of Savannah Sutherland. It is going to be difficult for a 20yo to keep her nerves under control at her first major championship but the experience is going to be invaluable to her going forward.

Paris and the Olympic Games next year could see her blossom. We expect her to be mixing it with the best in the world on a regular basis by them and she could even be in with a shout of being a medalist herself by that point. Her potential is genuinely at that level! 

We wish all of the athletes representing Team Canada all the best in Budapest. We know that they will make Canada proud on the world stage and land some medals to bring back with them.